The roughly $680 million comic book and graphic novel industry is still heavily reliant on sales and advertising from print–unlike its fellow publishers in the newspaper and magazine worlds, where the transition to digital is farther along. Sure, there are plenty of apps for comics out there, from startups like ComicZeal4 to big players like Marvel’s iPad reader. But when it comes to taking full advantage of its digital potential, “most online comics are stagnant,” says Disney’s Dario Di Zanni. To reverse that trend, Disney has partnered with Microsoft and tech-design firm Vectorform to create the Tron: Legacy graphic novel, one of the first HTML5 graphic novels made by a major brand…”

As you may have heard, The AP Timeline Reader we created in HTML5 for The Associated Press, is up for an award for technical achievement, but we’ve had a few surprises brewing for South By Southwest. Today we will debut Foursquare Playground and turn a social network of text and images into a stylish isometric perspective–to celebrate the release of IE9, and foursquare’s (awesome) new API. Later in the week we will unveil our latest brand experience for the Fiat 500 at the world-famous FADER FORT by FIAT, to let car and music lovers blend brand assets, FADER media, and user generated content into one of the world’s largest vision-based interactive mosaics, using a Kinect sensor and motion sensing technologies with Windows 7.

We’ve got that and more going on at this year’s SXSW, so check back here, or follow us on Twitter — and watch the video below.

Just recently Vectorform’s Dominic Espinosa gave an interview with Microsoft. Watch the interview from the link below and learn about Dominic’s experience developing an interactive website for the Associated Press, which takes full advantage of the latest web standards and technologies supported in Internet Explorer 9.